, and
found a woman crouched under the bulwarks, with two small children
asleep on her knee.

"My good woman, what is the matter with you?" said he.

"The night is cold," she said in the Gaelic, "and my children are cold;
and it is a long way that we are going."

He answered her in her own tongue.

"You will be warmer if you go below; but here is a plaid for you,
anyway;" and with that he took the plaid from round his shoulders and
flung it across the children, and passed on.

That was the way of the Macleods of Dare. They had a royal manner with
them. Perhaps that was the reason that their revenues were now far from
royal.

And meanwhile the red light still burned in the high windows of Castle
Dare, and two women were there looking out on the pale stars and the
dark sea beneath. They waited until they heard the plashing of oars in
the small bay below, and the message was brought them that Sir Keith had
got safely on board the great steamer. Then they turned away from the
silent and empty night, and one of them was weeping bitterly.

"It is the last of my six sons that has gone from me," she said, coming
back to the old refrain, and refusing to be comforted.

"And I have lost my brother," said Janet Macleod, in her simple way.
"But he will came back to us, auntie; and then we shall have great
doings at Castle Dare."

CHAPTER II.

MENTOR.

It was with a wholly indescribable surprise and delight that Macleod
came upon the life and stir and gayety of London in the sweet June time,
when the parks and gardens and squares would of themselves have been a
sufficient wonder to him. The change from the sombre shores of lochs Na
Keal, and Iua, and Scridain to this world of sunlit foliage--the golden
yellow of the laburnum, the cream-white of the chestnuts, the rose-pink
of the red hawthorn, and everywhere the keen, translucent green of the
young lime-trees--was enough to fill the heart with joy and gladness,
though he had been no diligent student of landscape and color. The few
days he had to spend by himself--while getting properly dressed to
satisfy the demands of his friend--passed quickly enough. He was not at
all ashamed of his country-made clothes as he watched the whirl of
carriages in Piccadilly, or lounged under the elms at Hyde Park, with
his beautiful silver-white and lemon-colored collie attracting the
admiration of every passer-by. Nor had he waited for the permission of
Lieutenant Ogilvie to ma